McDaniel, Stundtner, Vaughn and Woodard earn national grants

MADISON – Four teachers in Madison City Schools have been awarded four of the nine possible grants on a national level from Fund for Teachers.

Since 2001, Fund for Teachers, a non-profit organization, has invested $37 million to approximately 10,000 educators for pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade to pursue professional development.

The recipients are Rebecca McDaniel, Rainbow Elementary School; Kristin Stundtner, Heritage Elementary School; Liz Vaughn, James Clemens High School; and Beth Woodard, Madison Elementary School.

“I am proud of the many ways our teachers go above and beyond their classroom duties to improve their instructional skills,” MCS Superintendent Dr. Ed Nichols said about the grants in his “District Update.”

Fund for Teachers’ mission is to strengthen instruction by supporting outstanding teachers’ self-determined growth and development. Individual teachers can receive up to $5,000, while teams of two or more can receive up to $10,000.

These MCS teachers were approved for $5,000 grants for various education studies:

* Rebecca McDaniel – Will join an expedition with the Global Exploration for Educators organization to visit Japan and learn about the history, culture and community shared by an influx of students. She will see these residents continue to build a welcoming community and assist students’ efforts to help new peers/English Language Learners.

* Kristin Stundtner – Will attend training at the World Music Drumming Conference in Nashville, Tenn. Stundtner plans to integrate West African, Latin and Caribbean drumming and singing with social/emotional learning strategies that bring all students into the musicmaking process.

* Liz Vaughn – Will attend sketchbook building, en plein air drawing and painging course (a technique in Chinese painting) with Accademie Gallery in Florence, Italy. This study will address how artists portray their environment (urban and rural), model for advanced art students, components of project preparation and designing a sketchbook as a work of art itself.

* Beth Woodard – Will explore the lives and works of England’s creative writers of the past and present (for example, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Lewis Caroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roald Dahl, William Wordsworth, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and J.K. Rowling). Woodard will create an engaging unit that will motivate students to further develop their writing craft.

For a Fund for Teachers grant, teachers in public, private and charter schools across the United States are eligible to apply. Teachers must have at least three years of teaching experience in a classroom or classroom-like setting for at least 50 percent of the day.

With these grants, teachers have traveled to 170 countries across all seven continents, enriching their own practice and bringing new knowledge back to their classrooms.

For more information, visit fundforteachers.org.